Les Halles Food Riots

The Les Halles Food Riots were a wave of riots that took place in the summer of 1792 in the Les Halles district of Paris, France. The lack of bread caused many people to kill guards and steal their wagons, but eventually order was restored.

Events
In the summer of 1792, the Templar Order agent Marie Levesque, also a successful merchant woman, began to divert grain shipments to Francois-Thomas Germain's docks to prevent them from reaching the people. The people of Les Halles began to riot against the lack of food, and on some occasions, people armed with knives would kill the guards around grain wagons and ride away in them. Levesque's thugs prevented the bread from reaching the peasants, so Theoigne de Mericourt and Arno Dorian set out to stop the riots.

Together, they slew all of Levesque's thugs and Mericourt was able to make sure that the bread reached the people from whom it was stolen. The riots ended with the return of the bread, but Levesque's plots continued.